


Durriken's Lament: Back to Heaven

by ValkyriePhoenix



Series: Things That Should Not Have Worked: a Brief History of S.H.I.E.L.D. [5]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Idon'tfuckingknow, My brain is weird, Rated for adult concepts and graphic metaphors, Socio-political Commentary as song lyrics, lament
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-13
Updated: 2017-05-13
Packaged: 2018-10-31 03:49:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10891071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ValkyriePhoenix/pseuds/ValkyriePhoenix
Summary: The Twins have been fighting me on the next Code chapter. In the space they left open, old man Durriken cleared his throat and began to sing. And then it went sideways. It began as a lament of a people subject to genocide, forced relocations, and forced assimilation longing for home, honor, and peace. It....didn't stay that way.





	Durriken's Lament: Back to Heaven

**Author's Note:**

> There's a lot of historical references and uncommon word usages, and holy cow, METAPHORS. I will attempt to explain as much as I can in the End Notes, but I make no guarantees. In the mean time, remember that this is written by a minority man born in the mid 20's in Russia, he has lived through the Bolshevik Revolution, the subsequent acknowledgement of the Roma and their rights, went to the four Roma schools in Russia, and then lived through the rise of Stalin, the loss of those rights, Nazi occupation, genocide and concentration camps, then Stalin's forced assimilation programs, the various civil rights revolutions, the huge leaps in science and space, and the more recent steps backwards in those fields.
> 
> Minor key, slow as pall bearers.

Back to Heaven

 

It's along, long road out of heaven,

A long, long road that we fell.

No Jew, No Rom,

No Gerry nor Tom

Remains beyond the pale.

 

It's a long, long road out of Heaven,

A long, long way down to hell.

With pretty speech,

Like lemmings leap,

Then claim that we but fell.

 

It's a long, long road out of heaven:

Judged we throughout the lands

By blood and kin,

Or faith and skin,

But looked o'er the blood red hands.

 

It's a long, long road out of heaven

Lo! The red, bloodied hem,

'Twixt gilding and rend,

On slick, rich men

Cry havok! The poor stain'd them!

 

It's a long, long road out of heaven

For mere dif'rences we slew

Man and child,

Be tame or wild,

Like candles on which we blew.

 

It's a long, long road back to heaven

Let not a tear be shed

For the pains of red hands

or bones of the damned

But for the sinless, all long dead.

 

It's a long, long road back to heaven,

A long, long road out of hell.

We've icy rocks

On tall mountaintops

Instead of the churchyard bell.

 

It's a long, long road back to heaven

Through valleys filled with dead.

No cattle, no sheep,

And as we weep,

Not a single shirt 'th'out red.

 

It's a long, long road back to heaven,

With dogs e'er at the heel.

We march past dawn

Tho' storms rage on

And wish we could not feel.

 

It's a long, long road back to heaven,

Tho' we've come a long, long way.

Each step we take,

New injustice make

'Tis children the price will pay.

 

**Author's Note:**

> If you have a question not covered herein, ask, and I shall attempt to explain.
> 
> Remember, though my hands wrote and typed this, Twas Durriken who made it, and it is from his perspective, not mine. I explain from the perspective of a literate American woman who has a fondness for tearing into metaphor and symbolism, analyzing every the media.
> 
> One verse at a time:
> 
> 1\. 'beyond the pale' means 'beyond the boundary'. In most common use, this is a bad thing, as it means 'well outside what is acceptable behavior'. However, here it is used by a man of a nomadic people who has been forced into old-style ghettos with fences they could not cross all around, and survived concentration camps. 'Beyond the boundary' is exactly where one WANTS to be. Stretching the history and metaphor a bit further, "No Jew, No Rom" - the people forced into the camps by others - "No Gerry, nor Tom" - Germans/Axis Powers nor Americans/Allies - is an absolute NO ONE, innocent captives, enemy, nor opposition, NO ONE has escaped this hell we have made.
> 
> 2\. Should be pretty straight-forward. Urban myth insists that if one lemming jumps from a cliff, all the rest will follow, taking no thought to weigh the prudence of such an idea, nor determine the consequences. (There is no scientific evidence supporting this, but the myth prevails, and is useful for this.)
> 
> 3\. Pretty blatant discussion of racism, religism, hate crimes, and judicial discrimination based on prejudice. 
> 
> 4\. Have you LOOKED at our politics lately? Our entire society is built on the concept that the rich and corporations do more for society and thus have more rights, which allows them to gouge and bleed the rest of the populace however much they want, not only with impunity, but also with recompense, either "poor them! they had to pay a lawsuit!" or in actual benefits from government or populace.
> 
> 5\. self-explanitory.
> 
> 6\. We see the innocent every day... mostly in video clips of the bombings and wars in Syria, Jordan, and Israel. Most of them are dead, dying, or permanently maimed. For them, weep. For the pain and sorrow, even deaths of those who are guilty, who reap the deeds they plant for themselves, nothing.
> 
> 7\. Esoterics Return!!! Ok, *deep breath* SO, ...Damn. Okay, This requires an awful lot of history, with several points that all intertwine, here.  
> A) Forced relocation wasn't a new thought when Jackson sent the Cherokee on the Trail of Tears. "Undesired" peoples have been force-marched often across obscenely inhospitable territory, often without, or with insufficient supplies away from their traditional nomadic territories to places the "valued" people didn't want to live in.  
> B) Roma were largely believed to be thieves, despite having many legitimate professions from metal smiths to jewelers to weavers and tailors to traders. As a result, city and church officials often confiscated all belongings as "stolen goods" regardless of whether there was any evidence it had been stolen or not. The Roma were then driven out of the city and it's surroundings.  
> C) Historically, neither Jews nor "Gypsies" were allowed, BY LAW, to own ANY property, including land and businesses. Adding credence to those officials who chose to assume everything they had was ill-gotten.  
> D) Though most Roma, for the last few centuries, have been of the religion espoused by the stationary dwellers of their territories, priests almost unanimously refused them sanctified burial. They had to be buried in unhallowed ground because, despite their faith, the churches deemed them Un-Christian, simply because of their race.  
> E) Through the 1800's, deaths were announced by ringing the church bell. "Ask not for whom the bell tolls" refers to this practice, where people would send runners to discover who had died and whether the death affected them. Romani deaths were not accounted for this way. Ever. 
> 
> So you have a people, ripped of their belongings, forced to march across inhospitable land, denied their sanctified burials and holy-grounds, to die of disease, starvation, and exposure, buried wherever they fell, and not even granted markers for their graves.  
> This is what the 7th verse speaks of.
> 
> 8\. Partially rehash of the 7th verse, but with the addition of "not a single shirt without red," which hearkens to blood spilled on your shirt, like red hands, if it does not mean you are directly guilty of murder, you witnessed it...and did nothing to prevent it, making you indirectly guilty. As Ezra in the Bible, and Lucy Pevensie in Chronicles of Narnia, they told the people they were with what God/Aslan commanded, and were ignored, and, rather than arguing more stringently to prevent problems, or leaving to follow the commands themselves, they stood by knowing better and doing naught, and as such are, themselves, guilty as well.
> 
> 9.(almost out of words...cont. in 1st comment)


End file.
